I Lived for 30 Years Thinking My Mother Hated Me

Good evening. This is arinomama-nikki.

For over 30 years,
I lived thinking, "My mother hates me."

The reason I thought my mother hated me

I grew up in a dysfunctional family and
even now, more than 30 years later, I still carry the difficulty of living.

And, ever since I was a child,
I came to strongly believe,
"I am not loved by my mother."

It wasn't that my mother directly told me, "I hate you"
or "I don't like this about you."

However, I was the one who listened to my mother's complaints
every single day, as she was subjected to verbal abuse from my father on a daily basis,

"You and your father are alike,"was something she said to me several times.

Being nervous and worrying about small things.
Getting angry over trivial matters.

"Your brother doesn't have those traits,
but you do."

I'm sure she didn't mean anything deep by it,
and that it was just a passing comment.
But every time she said that, I would think,
"She likes my brother more than me."
"My mother hates me just as much as she hates my father."
I came to believe that very strongly.

I had wanted to confirm that fact, but
"What if my mother really does hate me?"
I was too scared to ask, and I grew up without ever knowing.

The day I gathered the courage to ask my mother

However, a few years ago, a chance to confirm it arrived.
When I was talking to my mother about the past, I gathered my courage and
came out with, "Actually, I thought you hated me."

The moment I realized it was just an assumption

Then my mother said,
"It's impossible for me to hate my children.
I think children are, in a sense, a mirror of their parents,
so if I were to do something that would make me hate them,
I would just reflect on my own mistakes."
.

When she said that, at first,
it didn't immediately sink in.
But when I compared it to my own children...
"It's true, there's no way I could hate my own children.
I might get annoyed or frustrated,
but it's impossible to hate their very existence or think they aren't important."
I realized that.

The young me
had simply applied the equation
I am like my father = My mother hates my father, so she hates me too
based on a single word from my mother,
but in reality,
there was only the fact that we had similar personalities.

All the painful feelings, doubts, and anxieties I had
while believing "my mother hates me" until now...
what were they for?

Along with those thoughts,
"It's important to ask, even if you're scared,"
I thought.

If I hadn't asked this time,
I might have been tormented by that assumption for even longer.

A single act of courage changed the scenery I see.

And even if,
"I hated you"
were said to me,
I think the current me would feel this way:

"To hate your own child,
you must have had absolutely no room to spare.
If I were to hate my own child,
I think it would be when my emotional capacity had dropped below zero.
Just because my mother hated me,
it doesn't mean my existence has no value.
It just means my mother didn't have the capacity to feel love for her child."

As a child,
I became convinced that I was "hated" based on a single phrase.

But now that I am an adult,
by gathering the courage to ask,
that scenery has changed significantly.

If there is anyone out there suffering from someone's words right now,

perhaps it is not a "fact"
but an "assumption."

I hope that for all of you who find life difficult,
your hearts will feel even a little lighter.

Thank you for reading.